The train wheezed to a stop with a dry cough of brakes and a metallic groan that echoed across the small, cracked platform. The conductor's voice came over the intercom, tinny and detached, like it was being spoken from somewhere far away:
"Finecorsa. Per problemi tecnici, il treno si ferma qui. Nessun servizio sostitutivo disponibile."
Mark blinked. The message meant nothing to the other passengers. A shrug here, a muttered curse there. They disembarked, scattered like leaves in the breeze, and disappeared into the skeleton of the town.
But to Mark, the words felt heavier than they should've. The train stops here. No backup. No other way forward.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
He stepped off the platform, the weight of the black envelope tucked against his chest. It hadn't left his coat pocket since the day that man handed it to him. The silver crescent seal pressed into the velvet made him feel like he was being watched--even when he was alone.
The town--if it could even be called that--was little more than a cluster of shuttered windows and faded signs. A crooked chapel spire jutted into the sky like a broken tooth. Dust hung in the air, thick with the scent of dry leaves and old smoke. There were no taxis. No buses. He asked the station clerk where the next town was.
The man just looked at him and said, "You'd be better off turning back."
Mark didn't answer. He adjusted the strap of his bag, turned toward the hills, and started walking.
---
The sun above was merciless.
It sat high in the sky, pale and punishing, offering no warmth--only pressure. The kind that pressed down on the back of your neck until you felt like you were dragging your shadow behind you like a corpse.
Dust clung to everything. It lived in the creases of his sleeves, in the space between his teeth, in the folds of his breath. The road out of town wasn't a real road, just a gravel trail that curved between rolling hills of dry grass and twisted olive trees. Every step kicked up dirt. Every breath was an inhale of the land's dry rot.
Time slowed.
Mark had stopped checking his watch hours ago. It didn't matter. All that mattered was forward.
He walked until his legs stopped feeling like legs. Until they were just weights beneath him, moving because they didn't know what else to do. His boots grew heavy with heat. The sun baked the metal zipper of his coat until it stung his fingers. But he didn't take it off. The envelope stayed close.
At one point, a lone bird passed overhead--black wings cutting through the stillness. It circled once, then disappeared behind the hills.
The only sound left was his own breath.
---
By late afternoon, his canteen was half-empty and his feet felt like they were bleeding.
He found a thin trail that veered off from the main path, shaded by leaning trees and flanked by the remains of old stone walls--centuries-old property lines, forgotten and overgrown. There was no one else around. No cars. No footsteps but his own.
Eventually, the trail curved to reveal something that stopped him cold.
A shrine.
Crumbled, worn down by time and weather, the marble had cracked across the base. A statue of a saint--its face smoothed by decades of wind and rain--stood half-collapsed, her arms outstretched in silent grief. A single rusted candleholder stood nearby, empty and cold.
Mark approached slowly.
There was something about it--the way the shrine still clung to the edge of the earth, refusing to fall completely, that made him stop and breathe. He sat beside it, not out of devotion, but necessity. His body ached. His shoulders screamed. The wind had picked up, finally, and it carried a faint whisper of moisture and pine from the distant hills.
He removed his coat, peeled off his boots, and sat with his back against the shrine's broken base.
For a while, he said nothing. Thought nothing. Just listened to the wind and the quiet creak of the trees.
The silence wasn't peaceful. It was thick. Like the earth had secrets it didn't want to share.
He ate half a protein bar. Drank two sips of water. Stared at the envelope for a long time.
He didn't open it. He never would. The seal wasn't meant to be broken--not by him. That wasn't the kind of message it carried.
As the sky turned to copper and the hills bled rust in the fading light, he felt the weight of the day begin to settle deeper into his bones.
---
Night came without warning.
The transition was fast--one moment the sky was bronze, the next it was ink. The temperature dropped with it, cold enough that he had to wrap the coat back around himself and tuck his knees close.
He lay beneath the weeping saint. Her arms stretched above him like a warning. Or a promise.
He tried to sleep.
He didn't.
In the distance, wolves howled.
Not just once. Not the clean, cinematic cry of a single lone hunter. No--this was deeper. A call and response. Multiple voices, echoing off the hills like ghosts dragging chains through pine needles.
Mark didn't move. Didn't even reach for the knife in his boot. He just listened, his back pressed to the cold stone, heart thudding in his ears.
He stayed awake until the moon reached its peak.
Then, finally--exhausted, blood thick with adrenaline and dust--he let his eyes close. Not in peace. But in defiance.
Because sleep was just another enemy to outlast.
---
When morning came, it came in stages.
First the light--grey and dull, like a coin left out in the rain. Then the birds. Then the stiff ache in his neck, followed by the throb in his heels and the sharp bite of a blister that had torn in the night.
Mark stood.
He stretched.
He looked at the statue one more time.
The face was so smooth, so formless now, that it could've been anyone. Emma. Himself. The man he might have to become.
Then he adjusted his coat, checked the envelope, and started walking again.
Day one was over.
But the road?
The road was just getting started.
---
***
A/N: it jumped from romance to action to drama now shonin?
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